Entering Captions or Subtitles on Google Video

For the hearing impaired, captions are necessary to help with understanding the content of a video. But for everyone else, captions or subtitles are there to assist when the video is in a foreign language, or when some parts are inaudible. True, they can be distracting but are sometimes a necessity. I’m a fan of foreign-language films (foreign from the point of view of an English speaker), and I find captions to be godsend.

Google Video now allows users to add subtitles to uploaded videos, and you can easily do this without using client-side software. You can simply upload a text file that’s already encoded with the appropriate captions, using the SubViewer (.SUB) or SubRip (.SRT) formats. Or, you can type in the captions on a text box that Google provides. What’s different with this and using client-side software, though, is that you cannot directly type in the captions on the video. You have to specify the time and positioning of each caption in the text file.

Here’s the basic format.

• Timecode. This code specifies the time in the video when the caption is to be shown. You can enter this in HH:MM:SS:FF format, where H=hour, M=minute, S=seconds and F=fraction of a second. You can either use HH:MM:SS.FF (subviewer format) or HH:MM:SS,FF (subrip format)
• Caption text. This is simply the text that should appear in the subtitle/caption.
• Blank line. A blank line indicates the end of that particular line.

So for instance, I want to add a caption to a short, one-minute video, with one line being displayed in the first half, and the second line being displayed during the last half, here’s the format.

00:00:00.00,00:00:30.00
This is the first caption.

00:00:30.00,00:01:00.00
This is the second caption.

The two times, signify the start time and end time, separated by a comma. Google video actually lets you encode without the end time, and the end time is automatically determined, either when another caption is displayed or when the video ends.